Ghost Heart (The PSS Chronicles #3)

by Ripley Patton

  I still didn’t believe it when they took me all the way upstairs and into a wing of the compound I’d never seen before. The hallway was not made of stone. It was more like a long hotel corridor. They opened a door and locked me in a room that looked like an expensive hotel suite, minus the windows, and of course, with cameras in every corner. There was also a queen bed piled high with pillows, a small desk and chair, a lounge area off to the right, and behind another door, a master bathroom with a full tub and shower.

  The first thing I did was lock myself in the bathroom. The second thing I did was guzzle down glass after glass of clean, cool tap water.

  It was impossible to miss my reflection in the bathroom mirror. I looked terrible. I was skinny, and dirty, and bruised. My hair hung in greasy mats. My face looked like it was covered in soot. When I was done drinking, I reached up to wipe a dark smudge off my cheek, and there was the stump. I stared at it. My not-hand. My hideous, truncated wrist.

  I lowered it, leaving the dirt on my face, and turned away from the mirror, scanning the bathroom for cameras. I didn’t see any, but I turned back to the mirror. It could be a two-way. That was just the sort of sick-fuck thing Fineman would do.

  I took a couple of towels and tried to drape them over the corners of the mirror, but they kept falling off. Everything was harder with one hand. I tried again and again, finally flinging the towels into the corner and storming into the larger room. I grabbed the wooden chair from the desk and carried it into the bathroom. It had metal feet on the bottom of its wooden legs. I hefted the whole chair up, as best I could, feet toward the mirror, and slammed them into it.

  The mirror didn’t crack. It just had four small impact-marks, like little decorative stars.

  I slammed the chair into the mirror again, pain shooting through my shoulder and making me drop it, one of the metal feet gouging into my right pinky toe when it fell.

  “Fuck!” I screamed, shoving the chair away from me. My toe was throbbing and bleeding. “Fuck you!” I yelled at the mirror, flipping it off, loathing it, and yet utterly helpless against it.

  I opened the shower door and slammed it shut behind me, sinking down against the cool porcelain of the tub.

  At least the glass shower door was frosted, not clear.

  I stood up and tried to undress myself, something I’d never done before with only one hand.

  In the end, I just ripped at my clothes, tearing and pulling them off, tossing them out the gap at the top of the shower. They were rags anyway, dirty and worn out from all the abuse they’d taken.

  When I was naked, I looked down and saw dirt and—something moving—small dots that weren’t dirt, jumping around my feet.

  I turned on the water as fast as I could.

  It felt surreal, like a dream, when that hot water hit me. How long had it been since I’d bathed? Two weeks? A month? I didn’t even know what day it was.

  The shampoo smelled divine. I rubbed it all over my body, not just in my hair. I lathered and rinsed over and over again, using the entire bottle. It smelled so good I was tempted to taste it, but I didn’t. When it was gone, and the bathroom was filled with steam, and the hot water started to run cool, I wrapped myself in a towel and got out. I had nothing to wear, but the towel covered all the important parts and I could always make a toga out of the bed sheet. Thankfully, when I went out into the bedroom, there was a pile of clothes lying on the bed.

  That might have creeped me out before I’d been taken, but the CAMFers had done much worse than invade my privacy. Still, I went back into the bathroom and got dressed in the damp shower.

  The clothes didn’t really fit, but they were warm and clean.

  I went back out into the bedroom and sat on the bed.

  This was really happening.

  They weren’t going to kill me.

  They wouldn’t waste clothes and shampoo on someone they were going to kill, would they?

  Maybe they would. Just to be cruel.

  I pulled a pillow into my arms, hugging it to me, and curled up on the end of the bed, trying not to shake or cry or fall asleep.

  I failed miserably on all counts.

  22

  OLIVIA

  I opened my eyes to see Mike Palmer sitting on the edge of the bed.

  I didn’t move. I was fresh out of fear, or shock, or whatever it was they were trying to make me feel. I just stared at him.

  “I’m not going to hurt you,” he said. “I know you’re not likely to believe me, but we don’t have much time. I’ve shut the camera feed down. We have about ten minutes before it comes back up. So, this is going to have to be quick, and you’ll have to piece some of it together on your own.”

  I didn’t say anything. I had learned not to say anything. My mother would be so proud.

  “I am not a CAMFer,” he said. “I mean I work for them, yes, but that isn’t where my true loyalties lie. When I was in Greenfield, I reported to both The Hold and Dr. Fineman about you, but my main objective was to keep your father’s painting out of the hands of the CAMFers. That’s why I burned down your house. I never expected you to stay inside so damn long. I ended up having to call the fire department myself. That was when I knew you were going to be a royal pain in the ass.”

  This was another trick of Fineman’s. He wasn’t done with me yet. He would never let up, unless I killed him. I was going to have to kill him.

  “Then,” Palmer continued, “when you bumped me back to your camp, I knew the whole lot of you were trouble. That kind of power doesn’t go unnoticed. By either side.”

  “You expect me to believe you work for Mr. James and The Hold?” I couldn’t bite my tongue any longer. “You shot Marcus!”

  “I shot Marcus in the chest,” he pointed out, “because I knew he could reboot, and I couldn’t blow my cover.”

  “No,” I shook my head. “I tortured you with my ghost hand. I saw you piss yourself with fear.”

  “You saw me piss myself,” he said, shrugging. “It’s not that hard to do. I was playing the part I was trained to play. Why do you think I warned you against going to Shades? You were never supposed to be there. Your presence in this compound has complicated everything we’ve been working toward. Plans cultivated and set in motion for years, thwarted by one stubborn, impossible girl.”

  “Oh gee, I’m sorry, did I mess up your diabolical plans to rule the world? They must not have been very fucking good if one girl could mess them up so easily.”

  “You call this easily?” he asked, looking down at my wrist stump.

  I pulled it to my chest and glared at him.

  “There is a war coming,” he said, ominously, like an actor in some cheesy action film. “It has been coming for a long time, and you’re a wrench in the works if I’ve ever seen one. But a wrench is a tool I can use.”

  “Whatever you think I’m going to do for you, you’re wrong,” I assured him.

  “No, I’m not,” he said. “Not if you want to save the people you love. The people coming to get you, and the people already here in this compound.” He held out his hand to me. There were two crumpled notes in it, two pages of The Bone Road with handwriting scrawled between the lines.

  “You found those in my cell. So what? You think that makes you my friend? Maybe you were the one who wrote them in the first place. One thing I know for sure; you convinced Anthony to cut off my hand.”

  “Yes, I convinced him to do that,” Mike Palmer said, totally flooring me. “It was the only way Dr. Fineman was ever going to let you go. You really think he’d be trading you off to Mr. James if you still had your hand?”

  “So, you were just doing me a favor?”

  “I did what I had to do, and now it’s your turn. Mr. James thinks he can win this war. So does Dr. Fineman. Neither of them can, but they’re too stubborn to ever admit it. I should know. I’ve worked for both of them for years. But there are bigger stakes than ever before, and my allegiances have changed. I’m working for someone else now, a third
party, shall we say, and she needs this from you.”

  “She?” I asked, staring at him.

  “You’ve met her,” he said, glancing down at the notes. “I could have written those, but I can’t stick my hand through a stone wall.”

  Danielle. He was saying he was working with Danielle on her behalf. No, I wasn’t taking the bait. He could have made her write the notes and reach through the wall.

  “Even if I believed anything you’ve said,” I told him, “which I don’t, what the hell do you think I can do? I lost my ghost hand thanks to you. I have no power. I have nothing. I’m the one who needs help.”

  “You haven’t lost anything.” He looked down at my stump again. “You just think you have.”

  “Um, no, I really don’t have a hand,” I said, shoving the ugly thing at him, and that’s when I saw it flash. My missing ghost hand pulsed into existence, a strobe of PSS. And then it was gone.

  I stared down at it, waiting for it to do it again.

  And it did.

  A hand, flashing into existence, then out again.

  “What the fuck?” I said, looking at Mike Palmer.

  “It’s coming back because you shared PSS with her,” he explained, “but I’m not sure why it’s flashing.”

  The flashing reminded me of Marcus’s chest when it rebooted. Marcus, whom I’d shared PSS with as well.

  “Anyway,” Palmer said. “The important thing is it’s coming back, and you can control it.”

  “No, I can’t.” I held my new flashing wonder-wrist out to him. “It’s random.”

  “No. You have to be able to control it,” he said, looking worried. “Try thinking of it as a light switch you can turn on and off with your mind.”

  “But I can’t turn light switches on and off with my mind.”

  “Practice,” he insisted. “There’s no surveillance in the bathroom, and you have to get this. If Fineman sees it, he’ll never let you go. And you can’t just turn it off. You need to be able to turn it on, too, because you’re going to need that hand. Now, I have to go,” he said, looking at the cameras nervously. “Whatever happens, whatever it looks like I’m doing, I’m trusting you not to blow my cover. Do you understand? If the CAMFers come out on top, I need to be with them. I’ll need to protect her.”

  “No—what am I—”

  “Use your power,” he said, getting up from the bed, “and trust your hand. It knows what it’s doing.” He was moving toward the door. “Think about everything you’ve learned from The Hold, and everything you’ve learned here, and be ready to use it. I’m counting on you being a royal pain in the ass one last time.”

  Then he opened the door and was gone, shutting and locking it behind him.

  I looked up at the camera and then down at my hand.

  Off, I told it, and held my breath.

  * * *

  Later, a CAMFer brought me food. Really good food: spaghetti with garlic bread and a fresh Caesar salad. I’d managed to keep my ghost hand off since Palmer had left but, after I ate, I locked myself in the bathroom, stepped into the shower, turned my back, and practiced. On. Off. On. Off. It took some concentration, but I could control it. I could even hold it on for longer than a flash. At first, only for a minute or two, but the increments got longer and longer the more I practiced. My hand was back, cooler and more versatile than before, but how was that even possible?

  Palmer had said my hand had come back because I’d shared PSS with Danielle, whose ability was healing. That made a certain kind of sense. I’d also shared PSS with Marcus, who could reboot. Maybe my flashing hand was some sort of combination of the two. So, at least that much of what Palmer had said seemed true. Telling me the bathroom had no surveillance seemed oddly convenient though. Had they seen me try to break the mirror and sent him to divert my attention away from it? Either way, this new hand was all I had to work with, and I was going to have to figure out how to use it.

  As for the rest of the crazy shit Palmer had been spouting about being a double agent who now worked for Danielle, or the big war coming and me saving the world, I was skeptical.

  Some of it was mildly plausible, but I was seriously having trouble wrapping my head around Palmer being a good guy who played a bad guy, or who played both. If that were true, how could I ever trust him? No, I was a pawn to him like I’d always been. He’d actually said it; I was his tool.

  So, if he was lying, then what was really going on? This could be one more elaborate mindfucking experiment arranged by Fineman. Or maybe the doctor truly was trading me and Grant to Mr. James and my mother. Either way, I had very little control over the situation. If there actually was a big, nasty, war coming, and I ended up in the middle of it, I’d deal with it then.

  Except Palmer had warned me to prepare. He’d said to utilize everything I’d learned from The Hold and from Fineman.

  “What have I learned?” I asked myself, my voice echoing a little in the shower.

  “Hello? Anybody here?” a voice called from the outer room. I knew that voice.

  “Grant?” I yelled, throwing open the shower and charging into the bedroom.

  He turned toward me and I threw myself into his arms. “You’re okay,” I said, burying my face in his shirt so he couldn’t see my tears. “They didn’t hurt you.”

  “No,” he said softly, lifting my head in his hands, his eyes darting to my stump. “But they hurt you. Olivia, your hand…” He wrapped his fingers gently around my wrist and pulled it between us. “I’m sorry I couldn’t stop them. I tried. I tried to break away.”

  “It’s okay,” I said, touching his cheek, seeing the sorrow etched across his face. He was cleaned up, just like I was, and smelling great, his hair still slightly damp and curling at his neck. He had on fresh clothes too. But nothing could wipe away the haunted look in his eyes. Did he see that same look in mine?

  I glanced over my shoulder at the cameras.

  “Come with me,” I said, taking him by the hand.

  Once we were locked in the bathroom, I turned to him, making sure my body was blocking the view from the mirror. “There are no cameras in here. We can talk. And I need to show you something.” I held out my stump and turned on my hand.

  “Holy fuck!” he said, his eyes wide. “How did you—I thought they cut it off.”

  “They did, but it’s coming back. At first it was just random flashes, but now I can sort of control it.” I showed him by turning it off, and his eyes went even wider.

  I thought about mentioning Palmer, but in the end, I didn’t. I knew what he’d told me sounded crazy. I didn’t need Grant to tell me that, and I still wasn’t sure I could trust Grant completely. I wasn’t sure I’d trust anyone completely ever again in my life.

  “That’s amazing. You are amazing,” Grant said, grabbing me, picking me up, and twirling me around. Then the twirling slowed, and I was sliding down the front of him; the hard, defined, warm, front of him, his arms strong around my waist, his eyes blue and intense.

  My feet touched the ground and I stepped back quickly, out of his arms, looking anywhere but at his face. “I’m glad you’re okay,” I said. “Did they tell you we’ve been ransomed? They’re letting us go, supposedly. But it’s hard to believe.”

  “Yeah, they told me. I wasn’t sure if I could believe it either. But it looks legit, right? Why else would they clean us up, and feed us, and put us in a fancy room together?”

  “It could be another trick to lull us into submission and get us to help them.”

  “Except they don’t know you have your hand back, do they?” he asked.

  “I don’t think so.” Again, it all hinged on Palmer and whether he was telling the truth.

  “I think they’re really trading us,” Grant said, hope in his voice.

  “Me too,” I said, looking up at him. “But we should work on some kind of plan, you know, just in case.”

  “Yeah, okay,” he agreed. “What did you have in mind?”

  “I’m not sure
yet,” I said, but an idea was forming in my head, swirling around and colliding with all the things I’d seen and done and heard about PSS since that first day I’d met Marcus in my Calc class. It was a terrible, wonderful, horrifying plan that would involve testing the boundaries and functionality of my new ghost hand on the only resource the CAMFers had given me.

  Grant.

  * * *

  “No, this isn’t right,” I said, stepping away from Grant and flashing my hand out of existence.

  We were in the shower together, towels draped over the door in case Palmer had been lying about the mirror. Grant was sitting in the desk chair, his shirt off, and I was standing in front of him, but I couldn’t do it. I had never used my hand on someone I cared about on purpose, unless you counted the time I’d touched Marcus’s chest. This was too much like that, intimate and sensual and terrifying. And it was too much not like that, because it was Grant, and I didn’t love him that way.

  “Liv, it’s going to be fine,” he said. “You’re not going to hurt me.”

  “I could, though,” I stepped back, overwhelmed with fear. My brilliant plan to reach into Grant didn’t seem so brilliant anymore. “I’m just—I’m second guessing myself.”

  “Okay, talk me through it again. Talk yourself through it,” he encouraged. “Why are we doing this?”

  “Because I have this theory about the things I pull out of people,” I said. “I think my hand can sense PSS, sort of the way Samantha can hear it, and I think the burdens come from within the PSS itself.”

  We’d been over this already. Grant and I had been locked in the suite together an entire day and night. We’d slept a lot, the deep dreamless sleep of the exhausted, and we’d devoured the meals delivered to the room. We’d also talked this out until we were blue in the face, and I’d practiced turning my hand on and off until it was almost second nature. Based on everything I thought I knew about PSS and my hand, this should work. But what if I was wrong?

  “So, that means you couldn’t pull something out of someone like me, who doesn’t have PSS?”